“Oh, look! It’s just the
kind of jacket I wanted and that I’ve always
needed!”
“That’s nice
dear.”
“Oh, but it only comes in large
L .”
“That’s nice
dear.”
Terry’s several thing, but a
large is definitely not one of them. She’s not even a
medium, and sometimes, she’s not even a small.
And that’s a problem when
buying non-toxic clothing. Most of the stores that sell non-toxic
clothing seem to believe that one size fits all. The most (or is
that the least?) they will sell is an oversized medium –
meaning it’s larger than most mediums, but not as big as a
large.
Not only does one size fit all, but
many of these stores are into the frumpy look. Frumpy is another
word for wrinkled or wind-creased. Actually frumpy is not creased
at all, everything just kind of hangs on you like a sack.
Frumpiness started in the 60’s with the hippies. Then the
yuppies came along and ruined it by turning it into the sack look.
The next generation tried to do away with it all together. Frumpy
clothing still exists, although many people would prefer to dress
casually without looking frumpy.
So, quite often I hear, “Oh,
look!” and know it will turn into nothing. This is nice on
our budget and it’s also nice that Terry doesn’t have
to shop till she drops. And when you have MCS that doesn’t
take long!
Of course, if either of us were good
with a thread and needle (and I don’t mean sewing on
buttons), we wouldn’t have this problem. We could just buy
the material and make the clothing ourselves. Janice’s (at
800-JANICES) does have seamstresses and they are sensitive to
chemical sensitivities. So, we could call them and order some
clothes made. However we’d have to specify organic cotton, as
most of their cotton is not organic. Just one of our little
idiosyncrasies – if we’ve got to have it non-toxic, it
might as well also be organic. Actually though, organic is a lot
less toxic than non-toxic non-organic, which of course is less
toxic that toxic non-organic, ….
Of course we would have to pay
the seamstresses at Janice’s, so there you go again.
Once Terry found a swimsuit –
not totally organic, but very close. She ordered the two piece
model. The top came. The bottom was put on back order. After
several months we called and they said, “Oh, that’s out
of season. You’ll have to order it again next year.”
You bet! The first thing Terry did when that swimsuit was back in
season was to order the bottom. It’s bad enough Terry
can’t find any clothes to wear (because people only sell
clothes which are too large for her), but running around in just a
swimsuit top was going above and beyond the call of duty. (I
suppose if it had been the bottom, I’d have had to say it was
going below the call of duty.)
We, in our naivete, of course thought
that it was just this one store. But we’ve run into similar
problems with other stores that sell non-toxic clothing. They
don’t let you know when something is out of stock or back in
stock. They’re just following the motto: If you have the
non-toxic clothes, the MCS shoppers will come.
So, getting back to one size fits
all. I was asking myself, “Why, if it’s one size fits
all, why don’t these clothes fit Terry?” (I have the
same problem on the other end of the scale, but let’s not get
into that.) So I looked up one size fits all in the dictionary and
found that it should actually be one size fits most, since the
clothes only accommodate a range of sizes, not all sizes. Well,
that explains everything! If it was one size fits most, they should
have said so. Which, I guess they did when they said, “Only
comes in large.”
Book 5 My World of Clothes
Written by Dale Stubbart
Blessed by Terry Stubbart